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It was a cold night. I sat there waiting for the bus home, and a man in a mobility scooter pulled up to the bus schedule and turned around to make a remark about how we were lucky there was a bus this late. I smiled, for I felt fortunate as well.

He moved to my side, and we started some small conversation. To my surprise, idle chit chat became an outlet for his problems, and in the following minutes he poured out his most pressing troubles at the time. He looked at least 70, his face speckled with white hair and age. I couldn't pinpoint his ethnicity at all, but that's probably because I suck at that.

If I were to explain his story simply, I would say he was in an unfortunate situation. It didn't matter whether he got himself into the situation or if it was all out of his control - it just is what it is. After hearing him out and politely refusing his regular offers of various food items (including pastries, cookies, and fruit cups), we began to talk about me. What I was doing there at such a late hour? What did I do for a living? So on and so forth...

"Korean?"

I shook my head.

"Chinese."

I nodded.

Satisfied with his deduction, he laid back in his mobility scooter.

At some point he asked if I was married, to which I quickly responded no.

"I'm only 18."

"Girlfriend then?"

I grinned wryly.

"Nope."

I was going to add a few more words to that, but I decided to shut up.

The man put on a thoughtful look before responding.

"School is better with a girlfriend. It gives you a..." he struggled to find the right word, but settled with, "... motivation."

I nodded and my heart sunk.

Eventually the bus came, and we boarded. He got on well before I did, and when I boarded I automatically made my way to the back, where I preferred to sit. But then I thought. How would I feel if I had been talking to somebody and then suddenly they disappeared? Perhaps it was pity. Maybe it was empathy and relatability. More likely it was a huge ugly mess of a bunch of those emotions.

So I stopped. I turned around, mumbled a quick apology to the person I was blocking, and took a seat perpendicular the man. He smiled and patted the seat in front of him, and I moved there after a moment of hesitation.

It was near impossible to hear his voice against the sounds of the bus and the world speeding by, but I nodded along at what felt like the right times and frowned at what seemed like the wrong times. After several of these exchanges, he gestured to something behind me.

In the back of my head I knew what he was pointing at. While I couldn't hear complete sentences, I knew that he had been talking about girlfriends - specifically how to get one. It was easy he said, all you needed to do was talk to them and then ask them if they want to go out with you. But things are rarely ever that simple.

Turning my head around I saw what he was gesturing at and confirmed my thoughts. An Asian girl was sitting a few rows behind us, eyes on her phone and a slight smile to her. I quickly averted my gaze and turned back to the man. He raised his eyebrows, daring me. I shook my head feverishly. Conventionally she may have been pretty, but she was not to me.

When it became apparent that I was not going to do anything, he called me a chicken.

I briefly contemplated explaining everything to the man, but I decided to shut up again. I wouldn't "do it" even if I wasn't like this, so maybe I am a chicken.

The voice of the nice lady who sounds kinda robotic comes on the speakers, and announced the next stop, which happened to be his. He held out his fist and I rapped my knuckles against his.

"What's your name?"

"Kevin. What about you?"

He just smiled, as if his name wasn't important. As he wheeled out to the aisle, he said to me, "Goodbye Kevin. Try not to be too much of a chicken."

=====

There is more to the story that I have written, but my writing is not skilled or expressive enough to do it justice, and in the end I have left out many points. In addition, I have sensationalized several events, but what I wrote is largely what actually happened. Naturally there is a good bit of paraphrasing going on, but the core remains the same.

Ultimately it was not the experience I imagined, not the epiphanic talk with an elderly man wise with age that I always thought it would be. Yet there is something special about such an encounter. Something about how unexpected it was.

Sorry.

My syntax are trash.

I'll try.